Poor Transtellars -what are they going to do?

drothgery wrote:Manticore didn't run a 1000-ship navy in 1920 PD. In the middle of a shooting war with the biggest and richest star nation outside of the League. And very few systems in the League have anything close to the Old Star Kingdom's GSP. The notion that any random core world could field a Navy similar in size to the RMN is not remotely accurate.

The limitation on the size of the RMN was people. For some reason no more than 30 million of the 3 billion citizens of the SKM could be in the military, and they had a lot of garrisons. If you have 10 billion people and no need to heavily garrison dozens of ex-peep worlds you have other possibilities open to you.

Hi Kzt, Drothgery;

You both make good points.

The figures you were citing were from HAE [circa 1908 IIRC], but the RMN of 1920 was a bit smaller thanks to Janacek's cutbacks and 'build downs'; the active warship crew numbers were only around 1.5 million with the reserve ship crews adding another 380-405,000 for less than 2 million total.

According to the '~June' 1920 Fleet strength chart [beginning or end etc], the ship total was 1398 after 'Thunderbolt', and the HoS new construction up to April 17, 1921 included 70 CLAC's, 79 BCP's, 11 BC-L's, 146 CA-L's, almost 196 CL's, and 46 Roland's, besides the ~200 SDP's that aren't completed until the winter of 1921, for a total of up to 548 without counting the 'unk-unks' or 'unknown unknowns' like the FSV's etc; which before losses [which of course weren't all listed in AAC] would have reached 1946, not counting the 60 GSN reserve SD's to push the corrected pre-loss figure over 2000 before adding the new construction of the next 10 month's before OB [plus including the 200 SDP's], which given the known RMN losses that the new ships outnumbered the older 'legacy' warships, if not in tonnage by that time.

The time it'd take to train and develop a large navy is a non trivial exercise in time, resources and patience, that the prequel books emphasize if I'm not mistaken, as well as Rozsak's creation of the MSSDF, but he has the best traditions of the SLN to work with and a large population base of 27 highly populated high tech systems, so while the RMN may have approached 1% of the SKM's population at the peak of the first war's effort, the Maya Sector could go to 1/10,000 or less to get really top flight recruits for its new cadre, which would still crew a much smaller fleet for some time compared to the RMN.

While Japan built a navy that crushed the Chinese in 1894 and the Russians in 1904-5, they started even before the Meiji restoration [~1867] with foreign help [ie European, especially British] including cheap post war American [both union and confederate] ironclads, IIRC; so they had almost 30 years preparation before their first major campaign.

Given the rate at which things are falling apart for the SL/mandarins, no one without a navy is going to affect the current war, which describes 2/3 of the SL, who have only
LAC's.

I've suggested many times before the possibility of the remaining SDF's breaking down into something like this:

300 with 5-6 hyper warships
150 with 10-12 " "
75 with 20-25 " "
38 with 40-50 " "
19 with 80-100 " "
10 with up to 200 " "
5 with " " 400 " "
3 with " " 800 " "

RFC's main comment dealt with limiting the largest SDF's to ~800, which is what I presume Mannerheim has, though the rest of the RF is still a mystery.

The ratio of SD's for those over 100 ships might be ~20%, the average of the RMN and PRHN at the beginning of the first war, a ratio probably based on that of the SLN and or the larger SDF's.

This might mean as many as ~1660 SD's from 37 navies, and up to 15,675 total hyper warships; although I feel the 19 with up to 100 ships probably have half that rate, ie more like ~8-9, but feel free to generate another set.

The mix might well include an old SD or dreadnought or battleship for prestige flagships for system presidents etc of the smaller navies etc, which are wholly obsolete NTM deathtraps against the SLN let alone the GA.

SFtS's chapter 37 [Byng's 'conference' with Verrochio and Hongbo] soon mentioned that Crandall's task Force was bigger than 95% of the extant navies in the galaxy [ie those with hyper warships], which given the 5 other hyper fleets with SD's [the 4 Haven sector and the SLN] we know of, since RFC shot down any other non-SDF having SD's, the SDF's that size might number at most around 25, though his more recent statements that only a handful or so of SDF's have even one squadron of SD's might indicate he's seriously pared down the potential number of naval actors in this war, to a manageable number that he can write about.

Beowulf has only 36 SD's, which might mean it has somewhere around 180 total, most of the rest probably out hunting manpower and Jessyk slave ships, but one wonders how quickly it will be able to expand given the RMN's manpower reduction technology.

Given the potential current size of the GA fleet, they could be larger than the SLN in just a couple of years without adding the Maya Sector and the likely SLN losses in the meantime.

Interesting times, indeed.

L


[quote="kzt"][quote="drothgery"]
[i]Manticore[/i] didn't run a 1000-ship navy in 1920 PD. In the middle of a shooting war with the biggest and richest star nation outside of the League. And very few systems in the League have anything close to the Old Star Kingdom's GSP. The notion that any random core world could field a Navy similar in size to the RMN is not remotely accurate.[/quote]
The limitation on the size of the RMN was people. For some reason no more than 30 million of the 3 billion citizens of the SKM could be in the military, and they had a lot of garrisons. If you have 10 billion people and no need to heavily garrison dozens of ex-peep worlds you have other possibilities open to you.[/quote]

lyonheart wrote:Hi Relax,

Quite right.

Without appealing to Ann Rand's novels, or Tocqueville's report on America, encouraging and protecting innovation and opportunity resulted in the USA catching up to and surpassing western Europe's per capita GDP astonishingly quickly despite's its vast head start in time, infrastructure and resources.

We have the textev from the early part of the series [as well as RFC's posts] of how and why the Manties were so innovative; a major part being their vast merchant marine [the MMM] which I've repeatedly estimated at at least 40,000 if not closer to 100,000 freighters etc, in order to generate its ubiquity, the large numbers or MM recruits for the RMN, and taxes that equaled the wormhole's back before the war.

Who heard or saw quite a bit of new ideas all over 'settled space' by crews able to see the advantages of new processes or techniques, quite aside from those deliberately brought to Manticore because its a rich society with lots of cash to invest in any potential winner, an excellent education system that meant investors weren't easily fooled by fraudsters, a society that encouraged social success by public admission to the nobility protected by a decent judicial system.

Of course it wasn't and isn't perfect, but its so much better than most other places, and its so much easier getting to than any other system you can name, it has become the go-to place for innovators of all types.

Just compare it the attempts at socialist control in Haven that restricted engineers etc from leaving the people's paradise.

In our present, until "too big to fail" and crony capitalism became prevalent, no one worried too much about obsolete industries disappearing, or deliberately forbidding by law competing products etc; it was a natural part of the business cycle of life; if you couldn't compete, you didn't last.

Of course you were a tad less verbose.

L

Relax wrote:"DDHv
Un-free economies also waste (people) resources because they cannot permit innovation. The innovators might cause upsets to society if they succeed
"
<< Shakes head >> They don't innovate because it upsets the POWERFUL elite who OWN said obsolete industries... Not society. The upper crust fiefdom Lords "society" nepotism, bribery, and sloth.

Why there is no such thing as "free trade" except with societies that have same governance structure.

I sit corrected, elites it is, I should have said upsets social positions. Lyonheart, you seem to have the history correct. It hadn't occurred to me that much of the Honorverse was stagnating in technology, and it should have


I just realized why I enjoy Charis in the Safehold series.

The idea of technical stagnation is repulsive to me. The historical events that led to the high innovation rate of the past few centuries don't seem to have existed at all often. It seems possible that the difference is not in the amount of invention, but in encouraging moving inventions of any sort into active businesses by patent and copyright laws plus extension of a pioneering attitude into economic affairs. Some of today's elites seem to want these things to disappear

DDHv wrote:
The idea of technical stagnation is repulsive to me. The historical events that led to the high innovation rate of the past few centuries don't seem to have existed at all often. It seems possible that the difference is not in the amount of invention, but in encouraging moving inventions of any sort into active businesses by patent and copyright laws plus extension of a pioneering attitude into economic affairs. Some of today's elites seem to want these things to disappear

Advancements in technology is great until it is you that gets replaced by a machine that can do your job faster and cheaper.

pnakasone wrote:

DDHv wrote:
The idea of technical stagnation is repulsive to me. The historical events that led to the high innovation rate of the past few centuries don't seem to have existed at all often. It seems possible that the difference is not in the amount of invention, but in encouraging moving inventions of any sort into active businesses by patent and copyright laws plus extension of a pioneering attitude into economic affairs. Some of today's elites seem to want these things to disappear

Advancements in technology is great until it is you that gets replaced by a machine that can do your job faster and cheaper.

ALL technologies become obsolete, some faster than others. R&D drives technology, money drives R&D. MOST R&D money comes from the government. In Japan it is MITI, in the US it is DoD.. Seems to me, the SL has a dearth of Government sponsored R&D (based on lack of textev.) which leaves Technodyne to fall on its own resources. It develops those trebuchet missiles and oops, the SLN is not interested. Why develop new products when your [only]client is ... just not interested?

Of course the MA spent $bazillions on R&D over a century+ just to develop the streak and spider drives, Plus countless on genetically developing the mathematicians to do the theoretical work in the first place.

As some someone said: There is something Darwinian about war. The push to innovate was stronger where the threat was larger.

WeirdlyWired wrote:

pnakasone wrote:
Advancements in technology is great until it is you that gets replaced by a machine that can do your job faster and cheaper.

ALL technologies become obsolete, some faster than others. R&D drives technology, money drives R&D. MOST R&D money comes from the government. In Japan it is MITI, in the US it is DoD.. Seems to me, the SL has a dearth of Government sponsored R&D (based on lack of textev.) which leaves Technodyne to fall on its own resources. It develops those trebuchet missiles and oops, the SLN is not interested. Why develop new products when your [only]client is ... just not interested?

Of course the MA spent $bazillions on R&D over a century+ just to develop the streak and spider drives, Plus countless on genetically developing the mathematicians to do the theoretical work in the first place.

As some someone said: There is something Darwinian about war. The push to innovate was stronger where the threat was larger.

It is not R&D that drives technology development but perceived necessity. If you already believe you are the pinnacle of all things civilized why spend resources on development of new technologies.

Yes this attitude has come back and bite more then one civilization in history.

Hi DDHv,

Apparently the British lead in the industrial revolution wasn't that the Brits were smarter, or had more money to invest, or a number of other cited reasons, but simply the ability to see the advantages of often foreign ideas and the willingness to push them to profitability, which others would then tweak further, building on many contributions that in a few decades left the rest of Europe even further behind, though they eventually caught up later in the 19th century.

Others think it was simply a larger middle class that provided a wider market, though France and other European nations had much larger populations, among other things indicating they had a greater agricultural surplus.

Some have also suggested it may have included a less restrictive NTM less 'influenced' judicial system than most of its competitor nations like France at the time, though the French were doing what they could to encourage innovations, including stealing them from England, but in the main the aristocracies of Europe were more interested in perpetuating the status quo than encouraging change for obvious reasons until the industrial revolution's progress couldn't be ignored anymore.

L

DDHv wrote:

lyonheart wrote:Hi Relax,

Quite right.

Without appealing to Ann Rand's novels, or Tocqueville's report on America, encouraging and protecting innovation and opportunity resulted in the USA catching up to and surpassing western Europe's per capita GDP astonishingly quickly despite's its vast head start in time, infrastructure and resources.

We have the textev from the early part of the series [as well as RFC's posts] of how and why the Manties were so innovative; a major part being their vast merchant marine [the MMM] which I've repeatedly estimated at at least 40,000 if not closer to 100,000 freighters etc, in order to generate its ubiquity, the large numbers or MM recruits for the RMN, and taxes that equaled the wormhole's back before the war.

Who heard or saw quite a bit of new ideas all over 'settled space' by crews able to see the advantages of new processes or techniques, quite aside from those deliberately brought to Manticore because its a rich society with lots of cash to invest in any potential winner, an excellent education system that meant investors weren't easily fooled by fraudsters, a society that encouraged social success by public admission to the nobility protected by a decent judicial system.

Of course it wasn't and isn't perfect, but its so much better than most other places, and its so much easier getting to than any other system you can name, it has become the go-to place for innovators of all types.

Just compare it the attempts at socialist control in Haven that restricted engineers etc from leaving the people's paradise.

In our present, until "too big to fail" and crony capitalism became prevalent, no one worried too much about obsolete industries disappearing, or deliberately forbidding by law competing products etc; it was a natural part of the business cycle of life; if you couldn't compete, you didn't last.

Of course you were a tad less verbose.

L


*quote="Relax"*"DDHv
Un-free economies also waste (people) resources because they cannot permit innovation. The innovators might cause upsets to society if they succeed
"
<< Shakes head >> They don't innovate because it upsets the POWERFUL elite who OWN said obsolete industries... Not society. The upper crust fiefdom Lords "society" nepotism, bribery, and sloth.

Why there is no such thing as "free trade" except with societies that have same governance structure.

*quote*I sit corrected, elites it is, I should have said upsets social positions. Lyonheart, you seem to have the history correct. It hadn't occurred to me that much of the Honorverse was stagnating in technology, and it should have


I just realized why I enjoy Charis in the Safehold series.

The idea of technical stagnation is repulsive to me. The historical events that led to the high innovation rate of the past few centuries don't seem to have existed at all often. It seems possible that the difference is not in the amount of invention, but in encouraging moving inventions of any sort into active businesses by patent and copyright laws plus extension of a pioneering attitude into economic affairs. Some of today's elites seem to want these things to disappear

the industrial revolution was acompanied by the green revolution, the agricultural revolution.

the agricultural revolution consisted of the use of minerals to fertilize the land plus the use of machines. + the use of enhanced plants because of the technology of genetics. which resulted in a 4x efficency of agriculture, releasing about 75% of the population for industrial use

withhout the agricultural revolution there would have been no industrial revolution

Back to the Transtellar question, and seeing the obvious relation between Manticore and Great Britain... keep in mind that the main reason that Napoleon lost is because both the French and Spanish navies were very effectively blockaded -- and in the Honorverse, the closing of the wormhole networks has both military AND economic advantages -- it can let the GA amass first line fighting tech at literally 3/4 of the periphery of the league more quickly than the whole SLN could respond. Not counting the fact that the tax revenue stream supporting the league depended on many systems now "behind the lines". An equivalent might be if a small Central American country with two ocean exposure and the ability to shift ships side to side (hmm... any guesses?) were suddenly the best run nation in the area, and amassed a good size set of ships with USN AD 2016 tech vs whatever everyone else has, plus the ability to reposition sufficient ships offshore of ANY South American country to have local superiority.

At that point said small country says "oops, sorry, your ships have to stay in harbor til conflict X is over". As a whole, South America as a continent would have sufficient forces to cream the central American country. But first they'd have to get past the blockade AND assemble a force majority... WHILE defending their own capitals and big cities, WHILE under constant observation. A difficult propsition, no?

So you're any other third world nation down thataway, you cut a deal pretty quick and get back to business. If you're Brazil or Argentina, (and maybe even Peru) you posture and rage and bluff... and keep your ships in harbor, because it's the only game left your corrupt politicos have left, right?

I could just imagine some Sollie Transtellars trying to change sides to the GA then continue business as usual, managing the bureaucracy with graft and blackmail. Then Elizabeth or Eloise finds out and ummmm, not much left of said Transtellar, or the bureaucrats.